Category: Game design
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Game Evolution: Developing Micro Bots
About a year ago, I signed my first publishing deal for my mint tin game, Laser Bots (which I previously discussed here). Ben Downton of Prometheus game Labs really liked the game, but wanted to develop it further to better fit his line of games. This is how we developed Laser Bots into Micro Bots.…
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It’s a Megablast: Designing Megablast Part 3
This is part 3 of my designer diary for Megablast. Following on from my previous discussion of the grid system, this time I’ll be talking about the aliens, combat, and A.I. The main focus for Megablast was to emulate the vertical shoot ‘em up video games I played during the 80s and 90s. My goal…
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From Screen to Table: Designing Megablast Part 2
This is part 2 of my designer diary for Megablast (a solo, deck building, shoot ‘em up game). I want to dive into more of the specifics of the game and my design process. In this post, I’m going to talk about how I went about adapting the screen-based elements of a video game into…
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A Blast from the Past: Designing Megablast Part 1
The basic idea for this game literally popped into my head a few hours before hearing about the upcoming 2020 Solo Print and Play contest on www.boardgamegeek.com. That, coupled with the theme from Xenon II buzzing in my head, was all the motivation I needed to get cracking with the design. My goal was to…
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Designing for Dyslexia: Text in Game Design
Introduction Great strides have been made recently in making board games more accessible to players with various forms of colour blindness. It’s something often discussed by players and designers alike. However, something that isn’t talked about (in my experience anyway), is how the graphic design can create a barrier to people suffering from other vision…
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Limitation Inspires Creativity: Designing Laser Bots
Laser Bots is a two-player strategy card game. Players each control a robot via an action management system: actions become more powerful depending on the amount of cards played before the effect occurs, so the order of card play is the key to victory. Origins Laser Bots started out life as a computer game that…
Another Dimension 